International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC) 6

To celebrate the launch of the International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC) 5 publication and the launch of IAAC 6, the RCA School of Arts & Humanities presents two panel discussions:

• The IAAC 5 winner 2018: Wang Huan in discussion with Gang Zhiyi (Minsheng Museum Director), Lewis Biggs (curator), Henry Meyric Hughes (critic and curator) and Ling Min (academic)
  
• Sacha Craddock (curator and critic), Dr Brian Dillon (writer and critic), Laura Grace Ford (artist and writer) and Rachel Withers (writer and curator). The conversation will be led by Professor Juan Cruz (Dean of SoAH, RCA) reflecting on the five iterations of the IAAC prize.
  

Sacha Craddock’s commitment to contemporary art encompasses curating, organising, promotion, setting up structures, education, critical writing, and creating new networks designed to bring artists and audiences together. Recent curated exhibitions include the Turner Prize, Hull 2017, 'Strike Site' at Backlit Gallery, Nottingham 2018, and The SPECTRUM Art Prize at Saatchi Gallery May 2018. In 2019 she is selecting the Creekside Open, the Neo Prize and the Exeter Open.

Brian Dillon is the head of the MA Writing Programme at the RCA School of Arts & Humanities – Dillon a writer and critic, and UK editor of Cabinet magazine. He is the author of several books of criticism, fiction, memoir and creative nonfiction. He contributes regularly to art magazines, newspapers and journals in the UK, USA and Ireland.

Laura Grace Ford is a London based artist and writer concerned with spatial narratives, contested space, architecture, fiction and memory. Drawing on cognitive mapping and the dérive Ford interrogates place by mapping the psychic contours of the city. She has developed a multidisciplinary practice where spectral languages erupt as fictions and dreamings, a reconnection with emancipatory forces embedded in the city.

Wang Huan is a Beijing-based writer, curator and editor of Jiazazhi Magazine. He has tried practising a kind of anti-stylistic writing and has published a series of art reviews in various public media such as LEAP Magazine, Art World Magazine, Jiazazhi Magazine, Art Shard and Ray Art Center’s Reviews. He has also curated a list of exhibitions including ‘Objects That Have Been Intruded’ (a programme of Jimei Arles International Photo Festival 2016), Finalist Exhibition of 2016 New Talent Award (Chronus Art Center (CAC), 2017) and The Port and the Image: Documenting China’s Harbor Cities (China Port Museum, 2017). 

Rachel Withers holds degrees in Fine Art and Critical Studies, and the History of European Art and Architecture. She writes about art and converses with artists. Since the late 1990s she has been a frequent contributor to Artforum International. She has also written for the Guardian, the New Statesman, Nu: the Nordic Art Review and the Swedish daily Aftonbladet (amongst other publications) and contributed to the first Tate Modern Handbook, Phaidon’s Vitamin P and Vitamin 3D survey volumes, and assorted catalogues of the Venice and Sydney bienniales (2002, 2005 and 2011). She is Secretary of the UK branch of AICA (the Association of International Critics of Art).

Professor Ling Min is an associate professor in art history at Fine Arts Academy of Shanghai University. Prior to this, she served as a research scholar of art curation at Goldsmiths London and also had leadership placement in Liverpool Biennial. She is currently Vice-Presdient of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and a trustee of John Moores Liverpool Exhibition Trust and board member of IAAC .

Juan Cruz is the Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the Royal College of Art. He is an artist whose work employs a broad range of approaches to exhibition-making, including video, performance, text and site-specificity. Prior to joining the College, Juan was Director of Liverpool School of Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University, where he introduced an innovative model of research and knowledge transfer with leading arts organisations, including Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial and FACT.